October 7, 2008

Statewide Water Roundtables – Moving Along. The Statewide Water Roundtables are now in full swing. We had about 70 people in Bend at the Central Oregon Water Roundtable on 25 September and about 55 people in Newport at the Coastal Oregon Water Roundtable on 30 September. The Eastern Oregon Water Roundtable is in Ontario this week and in the next two weeks we’ll hold the final two in Medford and Salem. Check the WWW site for the latest information.

Nonrenewable Ground Water Resources. The rest of the world may be focusing on sustainable, renewable water resources but Todd Jarvis and I are channeling the McCain-Palin ticket (‘mavericks’) as we spend a few days with some of our close friends discussing nonrenewable ground water resources. Join us at the Red Lion on the River in Portland on 13-14 October for a few days of contrarian viewpoints. You can register at the door.

When I proposed a similar session at next March’s World Water Forum in Istanbul, the response from the session coordinator was “I don’t think anyone else is talking about that.” I am unsure quite how that comment was meant.

Candidates Speak About Water and Some Sage Advice. In response to last month’s inquiry I received a number of comments about Sen. McCain and Sen. Obama addressing water issues. You can see the comments made to my 10 September WaterWired blog post and Abby Brown’s Water For The Ages 27 September post – the links right at the end of the ‘Water and the next US President’ post.

The aforementioned post, in which Dr. Peter Gleick of the Pacific Institute offers some advice to the next president on the eight major water challenges and some brief proposals on how to address them, is worth your time. The original slides associated with Gleick’s comments can be seen online.

Cadillac Desert Revisited. I suspect most people reading this newsletter have either read the late Marc Reisner’s Cadillac Desert at least once, seen the four-part video, or done both. If you’re going to read one book on Western USA water, Reisner’s is the one. Marc left us way too early, but his legacy persists, largely because of that book. It reads like a novel, and was voted by The Modern Library as one of the 100 best English-language nonfiction books of the 20th century. 

I first met Marc in 1986, right after Cadillac Desertwas published but before it caught on. We invited him to make the drive from San Francisco to Reno to speak at the University of Nevada-Reno. For nothing but travel expenses, he gladly accepted, and spoke to a large group (100+) for about an hour without any notes or visual aids, all without missing a beat. At the end of the hour he paused and asked if we wanted him to speak a while longer. I told him that some students would have to leave for class but that he was welcome to continue. Not one person left the room, and Marc continued for about another 45 minutes or so. I’ve seen few people captivate an audience like he did that day.

So why do I broach this topic? Well, as the book nears its 25th anniversary, some thought it might be a useful exercise to bridge journalism with science. Reisner, drawing upon the insight of John Wesley Powell, made some apocalyptic predictions at the end of his book, among them:

1. Many of the great dams will soon impound enough sediment that they will fail to serve their two main purposes: water delivery and power generation.
2. Evaporation of irrigation water and salt accumulation in many of the most productive agricultural areas in the western US will degrade soils and diminish crop production and reduce the economic benefits of reclamation projects.
3. Ultimately, water shortages will pit urban population growth against food production.  Population growth and water use in one state (in particular California) may diminish the scope for urban population growth in other states (Arizona and Nevada) as well as agricultural production in other states (Arizona) and countries (Mexico). 
4. Cheap water is the root of all of these problems. Free market water policies would force agriculture to conserve water and grow more sustainable crops in arid and semi-arid landscapes.

Have these come true? A group of hydrologists, ecologists, geologists, economists, and lawyers will quantify these predictions using state-of-the-art tools, with the goal of producing a 25th anniversary assessment of “Powell’s Prophecy.” Yours truly has been invited to participate as the group’s hydrogeologist. It was one of those requests I couldn’t refuse. 

Climate Change Refugees in Oregon? So now that I have invoked Cadillac Desert, let's take the next step: what about climate change refugees showing up at Oregon's doorstep? People think I'm daft for talking about this, but now comes Eric Mortenson's 5 October 2008 article from The Oregonian, built around a question asked by Lorna Stickel of the Portland Water Bureau at a meeting last spring. Lorna, a member of the IWW's Advisory Board, had inquired whether Portland metro area population projections included climate change refugees. So if I am daft, I am in excellent company.

ASCE-Oregon Infrastructure Report Card. Those of you who are members of the American Society of Civil Engineers know that the ASCE Oregon Section is reviewing Oregon’s infrastructure. The objective of this review is to develop an assessment of Oregon’s infrastructure per ASCE National guidelines for presentation to the Governor and Oregon’s Legislature at the start of the next legislative session to promote additional dedicated resources. There are four Discipline Area Subcommittees: 1)  transportation; 2) roads and bridges; 3) water resources and treatment; and 4) schools, solid waste, and energy. Christian Steinbrecher of Ukiah Engineering heads the overall effort and Christopher Goodell of WEST Consultants heads the water resources and treatment subcommittee.

Spending the Week in Tbilisi, Georgia. I am in Tbilisi the week of 6 October for the final meeting of our South Caucasus River Monitoring project. I’m finishing this column about noon local time on 6 October, 11 hours ahead of Pacific Daylight Time. One “advantage” to the time difference: I am watching the BBC report on the real-time tanking of the European and Asian markets way ahead of you folks. German Chancellor Angela Merkel is on the tube now, looking like someone just kidnapped her children. If you want me to contact you on the state of the markets so you can adjust your holdings appropriately, just email me and I’ll call you. There will be a fee for this service, of course.

Seriously, river monitoring seems to be the least of the region’s problems. The Russians are still here in Georgia (but not in Tbilisi), although they are supposed to be supplanted by UN observers by 10 October or thereabouts. We’ll see. There is understandable anxiety about South Ossetia, Abkhazia, and Russia’s future role in the South Caucasus. And then there are the oil and gas pipelines that run from Azerbaijan through Georgia and into Turkey. Just up the Black Sea coast Russia and Ukraine are squabbling about the Russian Black Sea fleet’s naval base in Sevastopol, now a Ukrainian city.

I am curious to hear from my colleagues here. My laconic Georgian colleague who met me at the airport was quieter than normal. I have not seen any signs of damage here in the capital city, which escaped largely unscathed – I think a few buildings were shelled, although I have not been out much. Nevertheless, I think we’ll bypass our annual field trip, although I did promise Todd Jarvis I would bring him some UXO (unexploded ordnance), or maybe that was XO. Better get that straight.  

But some normality persists here. I have my typical Las Vegas-style suite at the Hotel Primavera. The wireless internet works fine as long as the wind is blowing from the east. The road to the airport is still named President George W. Bush Street. And they still prohibit semi-automatic weapons at the Sheraton Metechi Palace Hotel, so life is really good.

Till next month,

Michael

“If you forgive the fox for stealing your chickens, he will take your sheep.”
– Georgian proverb

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Researchers track cool-water habits of Willamette fish (The Oregonian, 9/16/08). The research boat chugs down a side alcove in the Willamette River, wires dangling into the water from long poles jutting off its bow. Suddenly, a flash in the water. Josh Williams, an Oregon State University student positioned at the bow, jabs a long-handled net into the depths and pulls up a glistening cutthroat trout. The trout, briefly stunned by an electrical charge from the wires, is an unwitting participant in a research project that may change the shape of the Willamette River in years to come. The fish, about as long as your forearm, has a tiny monitor in its belly that tracks the temperature of the water where it dwells.

Researcher Finds City Storm Drains a Haven for Mosquitoes (EVLiving, 9/22/2008) - Storm drains on city streets have long had a useful function, taking away the runoff from rain, watered lawns and summer car washes, but a new study has found that they also can act as a haven for unwanted pests – mosquitoes. And as West Nile Virus continues to claim human lives – with mosquitoes responsible for transmission – such a finding could have health implications. Jill Townzen, a doctoral student at Oregon State University, sampled 40 catch basins in storm drains in Corvallis, Ore., during 42 days of sampling and counted more than 33,000 mosquitoes. Corvallis, a city of about 50,000 residents, has about 7,500 of these basins, and Townzen said if she extrapolated her findings to include all the storm drains, the sampling could have yielded more than 3 million mosquitoes. See also the OSU Press Release.

Cutting junipers can bring back water supply (Oregon Live, 10/05/08). When John and Lynne Breese moved back to his family's ranch outside of Prineville in the late 1980s, they heard stories of old springs on the property that had all dried up. When they started cutting Western junipers that had grown around the ranch since it was homesteaded, though, the water started flowing again. "There had been lots of anecdotal information from landowners and others that said when we cut a large group of juniper trees, we had increased flows from a stream, or we turned streams from ephemeral to almost perennial," said Tim Deboodt, Oregon State University Extension agent in Prineville. "But that's all they were, were stories." Now, however, Deboodt and other researchers are getting the first set of results from the 15-year Camp Creek Paired Watershed Study that examines how the removal of junipers which can suck up more than 30 gallons of water a day affects water flows in the High Desert.

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As a Ph.D. student in Water Resource Engineering (WRE), Travis is focused on surface water and groundwater interactions within headwater systems of mountain streams.  This has led to research in stream temperature dynamics and snowmelt processes at the catchment scale.  In order to better understand these physical processes, Travis has employed the use of fiber optic distributed temperature sensing (DTS) technology.  This new technology allows for continuous temperature readings every meter along the length of the cable and is accurate to a hundredth of a degree centigrade.  Travis’ research will hopefully lead to new insights into the complexities of stream response to snow and changing climate conditions.

This past year, Travis also mentored students in the Eco-Informatics Summer Institute program, collaborated with a European research team, and volunteered with the STEWARDSHIP outreach program of the Marys River Watershed Council, Marys Peak Interpretive Center, and Oregon Trout.  The 10-week Eco-Informatics program introduced math and computer science undergraduates to the field of ecology and was held at the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest. Travis guided students in field experiments that dealt with soil water movement, conservative tracers, and stream temperatures and helped students leave the program with a broad understanding of water storage and release. In April, along with Julie Gabrielli, a M.S student also in WRE, Travis began collaborating with a team from Delft, Holland to use DTS technology to help model climate change scenarios and land management strategies for fish habitat. 

For more information contact Travis at rothtra@engr.orst.edu.

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IWW, WRGP, City of Corvallis and Benton County Water team up for Kids Day for Conservation. Associate Director Todd Jarvis, in concert with Water Resource Graduate Program Director Mary Santelmann and graduate students Paris Edwards and Marisa Sowles, and Benton County Water Policy Coordinator Adam Stebbins teamed up with Mark Taratoot of the City of Corvallis Public Works for a booth on water conservation. The City's display of leaky toilets, leaky faucets and faucet repair station, along with a groundwater flow model, "stopped the flow" of hundreds of kids as they entered the Benton County fairgrounds building.

IWW Provides Training to Wyoming Water Operators. Associate Director Todd Jarvis traveled to Cody, Wyoming to serve as the keynote speaker for the annual conference for water and wastewater treatment operators sponsored by the Wyoming Association of Rural Water Systems. Over 165 attendees participated in the daylong training in global water, water conflict assessment, and professional ethics in water. Todd also promoted a multi-billion dollar concept of capturing the billions of gallons of water produced by coal bed methane production and bottling it under the "Fossil Fuels Bottled Water" brand. IWW hopes to capture a small royalty from Wyoming's efforts at a novel approach to water reuse!

IWW Raises Awareness about Bottled Water and the Environment. Associate Director Todd Jarvis spent October 3 with 19 fifth graders at Ashbrook Independent School in Corvallis discussing bottled water and the environment. A blind "taste test" between Corvallis tap water and a few of Oregon's bottled waters revealed that the bottled waters derived from Oregon Rain and from a deep basalt well in northeastern Oregon and distributed by Wal-Mart matched Corvallis tap water, with bottled water from the Willamette River coming in a distant third place finish. Next year, Todd will incorporate a contest for an idea to locally reuse the plastic bottles with the best idea receiving a travel bag made from recycled bottles made by Act 2 Green.

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Are you interested in sustainability and do you have an idea for how to get there? Consider entering the USEPA P3 Design Competition for Sustainability: People, Prosperity and the Planet.

EPA and its 40 partners launched the P3 Award in 2004 to respond to the challenges of the developed and developing world in moving toward sustainability. This national competition enables college students to research, develop and design scientific, technical and policy solutions to sustainability challenges. Their designs are helping to achieve the mutual goals of economic prosperity while providing a higher quality of life and protecting the planet. Students and their faculty advisors compete for EPA's P3 Award and the opportunity of up to an additional $75,000 in funding to move their designs to the marketplace or implement them in the field. Deadline to apply for Phase I grants of $10K is December 23, 2008.

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October 7, 14, 21. Statewide Water Roundtables. These free and open events are listening sessions designed to inform the Oregon Water Resources Commission as it develops a strategic water plan for Oregon. The roundtables have been convened by the OSU Institute for Water and Watersheds, Oregon Sea Grant Extension, OUS Institute for Natural Resources and the Oregon House Committee on Energy and the Environment. The public forums will include brief overviews of Oregon’s current water situation followed by facilitated discussions. Join the roundtable email list for updates.

Wednesday, October 8, 4-5:30 p.m., 102 Owen Hall, OSU. The Water Transactions Program in the Columbia OSU Fall Water Resources Seminar Series. Speaker: Molly Whitney, National Fish & Wildlife Foundation. The seminar series theme is: When Water Does Run Uphill: The Economics and Politics of Water in the 21st Century. Students can register for credit. FMI: Todd Jarvis, 737-4032.

Wednesday, October 8, 4-5:30 p.m., 193 Burt Hall, OSU. Observed and Projected Changes in Climate Extremes. Speaker: Dr. David Easterling, National Climatic Data Center. Dr. Easterling is a candidate for the position of Director for the new Oregon Climate Change Research Institute.

Monday, October 13 - Tuesday, October 14, CH2MHill Alumni Center, OSU, Corvallis. Assessing the Response of Streams to Contemporary Forest Practices: A Conference on Paired Watershed Studies. The purpose of this conference is to report on the state-of-the-science of the environmental effectiveness of contemporary forest practices. The conference will feature reports on preliminary results, current status, and future directions for the three WRC paired watershed studies. Also, results will be presented from similar research from throughout the Pacific Northwest.

Monday, October 13 - Wednesday, October 15, Portland, OR. Sociotechnological Aspects of Nonrenewable Ground Water Resources: Half-Empty, Hall-Full, Top-Down, Bottom-Up, and Some Paths Forward (International Conference on Nonrenewable Ground Water Resources). The National Ground Water Association, in association with the Institute for Water and Watersheds, The World Bank, and the International Hydrological Programme of UNESCO, will host an international conference on nonrenewable ground water. There will be presentations on all aspects of nonrenewable ground water: legal, social, economic, scientific/engineering, institutional, policy, and management.

Wednesday, October 22 - Friday, October 24, LaSells Stewart Center, OSU. River Hydraulics for Stream Restoration. A short course with computer exercises and field work. Lead Instructor: Pete Klingeman, OSU professor emeritus of civil engineering.

Friday, October 24, Memorial Union Ballroom, OSU. Fall Fundraising Banquet for OSU Chapter of Engineers Without Borders. The banquet will feature a Latin American theme and will raise funds to support their water project in El Salvador. Tickets are $50.

Tuesday, October 28 - Thursday, October 30, LaSells Stewart Center, OSU. River Sediment Transport for Stream Restoration. A short course with computer exercises and field work. Lead Instructor: Pete Klingeman, OSU professor emeritus of civil engineering.

Read about more upcoming events on the IWW's calendar.

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(listed by due date)

October 15 (and March 15). Sigma Xi, Research Grants for Undergraduate and Graduate Students. Sigma Xi, a scientific organization, offers grants-in-aid to fund research in science and engineering disciplines. Grant amounts range from $100 to $1,000 (with an average award of $600).

November 3. OSU Undergraduate Research, Innovation, Scholarship and Creativity (URISC). The URISC Fund is intended to enable undergraduate students to initiate a scholarly relationship with faculty early in their academic careers. Funds may be used for student salaries, travel, expendable equipment, etc. For the academic year program the maximum award is $1,000 for 1 term; $1,500 for 2 terms; and $1,800 for the full academic year. Awards must be spent in the quarters for which the funds were requested.

November 3-12 (depending on discipline). NSF Graduate Research Fellowships. Consider applying for one of these prestigious fellowships! They provide three years of support for graduate study leading to research-based master’s or doctoral degrees and are intended for students who are in the early stages of their graduate study. OSU Water Resources students have received these in the past!

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(listed by due date)

13 October 2008. OSU General Research Fund (GRF).

Description: The intent of the GRF is to enable OSU faculty to carry out scholarly, creative work that should lead to the pursuit of other funding sources, or promote the development of scholarly activities. Projects funded through the GRF could include: pilot research, emergency funding, emerging research opportunities, new research field or new research field for investigator, developing research laboratories, or centrally-shared research resources.
Funding Details: Maximum award is $10,000.

20 October 2008. Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board Grants for Restoration/Acquisition; Technical Assistance; Monitoring; Outreach/Education.

Description: OWEB encourages projects that foster interagency cooperation, include other sources of funding, provide for local stakeholder involvement, include youth and volunteers and promote learning about watershed concepts.

3 November 2008. OSU Research Equipment Reserve Fund (RERF).

Description: Funds may be used to acquire, repair, renovate, or improve EQUIPMENT directly used for research. The equipment may be inventoried capital equipment =>$5,000 per unit, fabricated capitalized equipment, or minor equipment costing less than $5,000 per unit which lasts at least two years.

10 November 2008. OSU 2008-2009 International Programs Faculty Grants and Awards Program.

Description: Aims to foster faculty international initiatives that contribute to expanding and strengthening the international dimensions of teaching, research and service at Oregon State University. These grants are available for regular OSU faculty members (tenured, tenure track, professional or fixed-term non–tenure track) with at least a .5 FTE and a nine- to twelve-month appointment.
Funding Details: Nine awards of up to $2,500 are anticipated in the 2008-2009 program.

14 November 2008. IWW-USGS Water Resources Grants.

Description: Through the federal Water Resources Research Act (Program 104(B)), the OSU Institute for Water and Watersheds receives federal matching funds to support water resources research and education activities in the Oregon. All faculty at Oregon universities and colleges are eligible to apply. In recent years, IWW has supplemented the USGS funds with additional funding from the OSU Water and Watersheds Initiative. Priority will be given to proposals that examine issues related to long-term water and watershed management, although creative proposals on other topics are highly encouraged.
Funding Details: Up to $30,000. All projects require a 2:1 match of non-federal funds.This match can be made in multiple ways including “forgiven overhead” (on both the USGS and matching funds) since no overhead is provided to the faculty’s institution.

1 December 2008. NSF Hydrologic Science.

Description: Hydrologic Sciences focuses on the flow of water and transport processes within streams, soils, and aquifers. Particular attention is given to spatial and temporal heterogeneity of fluxes and storages of water and chemicals over a wide range of scales, to geolimnology and to interfaces with the landscape, microbial communities, and coastal areas. Studies may also deal with processes in aqueous geochemistry and with the physical, chemical, and biological processes within water bodies. Study of these processes requires expertise from many basic sciences and mathematics, and proposals often require joint review with related programs.

6 January 2009. USEPA STAR Integrated Design, Modeling, and Monitoring of Geologic Sequestration of Anthropogenic Carbon Dioxide to Safeguard Sources of Drinking Water.

Description: Seeking applications to conduct research to support the development of sound risk management strategies for the underground injection of anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) in candidate subsurface geologic formations. To further the scientific understanding of this practice, research is needed to investigate how integrating approaches in design, siting, modeling and monitoring of CO2 in the subsurface can provide safe and effective storage, mitigate potential risks, and prevent endangerment of existing and potential sources of drinking water.
Funding Details: Four three-year awards of up to $900K each anticipated.

A list of additional water-related external funding opportunities is available on the IWW Web site.

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H₂OSU is a periodic e-mail news briefing provided by the Institute for Water and Watersheds. It is distributed through the OSU Hydro Email lists and the Oregon Water List (http://water.oregonstate.edu/news/email_lists.htm) and the Web. Questions, comments and ideas for news briefs may be sent to the IWW at iww@oregonstate.edu. More news from the IWW is available at http://water.oregonstate.edu/news/index.htm.